“I was fired at so often I was called Rocket Man” – former Churchtown Primary pupil reveals role in Camp Bastion designs

A COURAGEOUS soldier today reveals the incredible role he has played on battlefields around the world.

Howerd Kernahan spent a dazzling career risking his life to provide safety for our troops by building camps on enemy territory.

Now he is getting ready to put others to the test by overseeing some of the obstacles XtremeSTORM competitors will have to take on.

From Iraq to Bosnia and Afghanistan, Captain Kernahan had so many death-defying near misses he earned the nickname “Rocket Man”.

The most high-profile project Mr Kernahan – who grew up in Churchtown – worked on was Camp Bastion, the largest British overseas military camp since World War II.

When he first saw the plot it was a bare patch of Afghan desert. Now it is home to more than 20,000 troops.

Mr Kernahan, then a member of the Specialist Team of Royal Engineers, explained: “We had a place in the middle of the desert next to an existing camp being constructed and paid for by the Americans for the Afghan army.

“The idea was that land was suitable and we could cross-pollinate training.

“It was a long way from any long-range missiles – in Iraq we were getting thumped by long- range missiles because we were close to where they could launch them.

“But the land we had chosen had not been mine cleared and we also needed to put up a perimeter fence and anti-tank ditch, and a hospital there as well. With the Americans I was trying to work out where we were going to put this camp and in the end I had came up with a footprint. This American general said: ‘What a ridiculous place to be building a camp’, now it’s an international airport, it’s a huge thing, what started off as a little compound became a multinational complex.”

The father-of-two was then tasked with creating a second site in Helmand Province, initially catering for 250 troops near the area’s capital Lashkar Gar.

He said: “I was sent to Lashkar Gar to work with local contractors. When I landed in the middle of the night I said: ‘Do you know what we are building here?’.

“We were basically a bunch of guys with shovels in their hands – they drove a heavy roller from Kandahar for 200km down one of the most bombed roads in the world for the building. I had to teach them how to make concrete, but by the end of it they were great.

“I didn’t have much protection either. I had a couple of guys and some infantry helping me out and we were continually getting these reports we were about to be overrun – we knew once we arrived things were going to heat up.

“We got up on the roof one night and stayed there all night waiting for an attack. That was the intelligence we had – there was a large Taliban force heading our way. Luckily it didn’t materialise.”

When Mr Kernahan joined the Army as an apprentice joiner in 1986 he had no idea of the life awaiting him.

With the exception of the Falklands the British Army had taken part in few major military campaigns since the end of World War II.

By New Year’s Day 1990 he had worked on the Antarctic, in Kenya and Canada with the Royal Engineers but never in hostile territory.

But later that year that changed as Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the first Gulf War began.

Often under enemy fire, Mr Kernahan’s job was to conduct reconnaissance missions on airfields to assess missile damage. When Saddam’s forces pulled out of Kuwait City, Mr Kernahan was one of the first to enter.

He said: “We were the first guys into Kuwait City and we met the local garrison and all the people who had been hiding. The whole city was absolutely ransacked – there was not a building left untouched – so when we drove in there was actually no power whatsoever in the city.

“We were led in by the militia... we drove in with no cover and a power generator to plug into the British Embassy. When the power went on this fax machine buzzed into life. A piece of paper came out and it was Her Majesty welcoming the Kuwaiti ambassador back on to British territory.

“There were some scary sites in that city, it really was an eye- opener for a 20-year-old. It was scary times – it was pitch black and oil fires were continuously burning. When I went back 20 years later I was flabbergasted at this place which was a destroyed city. It was unbelievable how much it had changed.”

Mr Kernahan also worked in a much different theatre of operations during the Bosnian War of the mid-1990s. There he was constantly under the threat of enemy snipers, but looking back on his days in the Forces the 43-year-old believes he was lucky.

He said: “They were good days for us because you could drive on a concrete road without the threat of an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) and in the first Gulf War it was all long-range stuff. Today on the frontline it is very different. The young lads more than meet the challenge – I really hold my hands up to them because they are incredible.”

Having left the Royal Engineers last year Mr Kernahan to become senior manager of Warrington-based Environmental Scientifics Group he no longer has to worry about snipers.

Instead he is considering how to torment others as he takes up a role with XtremeSTORM.